


Nothing Left

by whatteam_voltron



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 02:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15547506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatteam_voltron/pseuds/whatteam_voltron
Summary: The reason Lance could mostly keep his sanity when everything was going wrong in space was because he could think of his family back home. If his friends didn't like him anymore, if he was a disappointment to Shiro, if he was just a placeholder of a paladin, none of it mattered as long as he remembered he had a family who loved him to go back to.But with all the things piling up, Lance could barely hold himself together, even when thinking about them. And then they go to Earth, and Lance finds they are gone. His family was killed.And it all comes crumbling down.





	Nothing Left

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, if Lance's family isn't alive and well in the show I will be ready to fight someone but I had to do this fic.
> 
> I'm one of those idiots who took French so please correct my very very bad Spanish I tried to fit in.
> 
> WARNINGS: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts

Lance could barely tell what was happening once he got to Earth, all he could think about was seeing his family again. He could see them discussing things with Pidge's dad. It was busy at first, with greetings and explanations, until finally he and Coran were going to go over the blueprints together.

And the rest of the team didn't have much they had to do.

"Hey guys, anyone wanna hop in Red with me and we can visit my family? If my abuela likes you, she might even give you some tamales, and trust me when I say she's the best cook in the whole world, no offense Hunk."

Hunk only shrugged. "Grandmothers have powers with food the rest of us can't achieve. Plus, you know, years of experience. Hey, maybe she can teach me some recipes!"

Lance laughed. "You'll have to _really_ get on her good side for that, Hunk, she hasn't even shown _me_." 

Hunk grinned. "Challenge accepted, Lance. You know, I've never met a grandma who didn't love me." He walked by Lance and got into the Red lion.

"We'll see. Now who else is coming?" He stood in front of his lion and gestured to the entrance, welcoming anyone who might want to join.

The others looked at each other, as if unsure if they might still be needed where they are. Finally Keith shrugged and got on board, followed by Pidge, and finaly Shiro and Allura.

Lance followed them in and sat down, taking the controls. "Hey guys, feeling kinda cramped back there? This is just like old times, huh? Well, different lion and Allura wasn't there, but remember-"

Keith cut him off. "Yes, Lance. Now are we going anywhere or what?"

"Geez, cool your jets." He took off. The ride didn't take long, but Lance babbled the whole time, mostly about his family. "And my little sister Ana, she's about 15, or she was when we left, and she is the most brutally honest kid, I swear, once I tried writing a book, and she flat-out told me it was the worst thing she ever read. But when I wrote a letter to her about what Iverson was saying about how I was a complete waste of space at the Garrison and he'd sooner throw me off a cliff than trust me with a plane and she wrote back saying she was going to punch the guy and all that, talking about how I didn't have as much time to train as a fighter pilot as the others and was just as good as the others and-"

Pidge put up a hand. "Hold on a second, I don't remember Iverson saying _that_ to you. He was an asshole, yeah, but-"

"Oh yeah, you guys weren't there for that one. He's nice when you two are around."

"Yeah, I'm with your sister then. Someone's gotta punch him."

Keith smirked. "Already handled it."

They looked at him and he shrugged. "But a few more wouldn't hurt."

Shiro seemed to just tune in to the conversation. "No punching anyone. We might need to cooperate with the Garrison."

Pidge pouted as she leaned back.

Lance continued babbling as the others talked amongst themselves.

"And here's Cuba, isn't she beautiful? God, it's been so long... We're getting close to the house now, so-" He cut himself off. His voice was starting to be a constant so the absence of it alerted the others something was wrong. " _No._ " It seemed to drop 20 degrees in the lion. "No, nonono."

Suddenly Lance jerked the lion to the ground.

"What is it?" Pidge asked.

"What's happening?" Shiro grabbed the back of Lance's chair.

"Lance?" Hunk looked out the front of the lion. He saw dozens of rooftops getting bigger, and then-

Where it seemed another rooftop would be, a large pike of darkened rubble. "Lance, that's not-"

"This can't be happening!" Within a few seconds, Red had touched down none too gracefully in the nearest space wide enough and Lance was leaping from his seat. "No, no, no, Dios, no." He ran around the corner, towards what used to be his family home, but it seemed to be collapsed and burnt to a crisp. The homes surrounding it remained untouched.

His breathing picked up. "No, this can't-" He saw someone leaving a house across the street. "Disculpe! Por favor! ¿Qué pasó? Mi familia! Por favor, mi familia vive aquí, era mi casa!"

The man he was speaking to sighed. "Sorry, kid. I'm American, we got sent here to investigate some irregular- well, we're not supposed to share many details. But uh... no hablo español. So unless you know English-"

Lance restrained himself from leaping at the man. "My family lived here. Please- what happened to them?" He vaguely registered the others catching up behind him.

The man had the decency to look sorry as he responded. "I'm not supposed to talk about- screw it. Something weird hit that house, some laser or something, during a party, completely fried it. No one made it out, kid."

"I- uh-" Lance was going numb, grasping at straws. "I- what kind of party?" Maybe some people weren't at the house, maybe he could find the rest of the family, or at least his cousins-

"I think they said it was a wedding."

Lance's throat went dry. Right. Wedding. No one would miss that. Reality was starting to hit him. He brought himself to ask one more thing. "When?" His voice broke.

"Two days ago. Listen, I gotta go. Don't tell anyone I told you this."

Lance numbly nodded as the guy walked away. He turned his head to stare at the rubble. He felt far away from himself, he could barely feel the tears running down his cheeks.

"Lance? Lance, say something!"

"I know it's hard, but you have to-"

The voices around him turned to nonsense as Lance's feet gave out under him. He didn't feel anything when he hit he ground. He couldn't breathe.

Gone. They were gone. He'd never see his abuela, his sisters, his brothers, his mamá, his cousins, all dead. Two days. If he hadn't insisted they stay on that one planet another day to party with the aliens, if they just _moved a little faster-_

And then the other part hit him. This attack was planned, it was _for him._ The Galra must hve found his family and killed them to upset him.

He was gasping for air between his gulping sobs. He felt two hands on his shoulders and heard Shiro speaking to him. "Lance, please, I need you to breathe with me."

He wrenched himself away. "Why would I want to-" He frantically gasped for air- "Breathe when-" A gasp- "Everyone who ever cared about me is gone?"

The others shared a worried glance. Hunk and Allura both had tears in their eyes.

Allura stepped forward, crouching to speak to the other paladin. "Lance," She said in a soft voice. "Lance, look at me."

Miraculously, he complied.

"Breathe with me, Lance. In. Out. In. Out." She repeated this until Lance seemed to listen. Shiro whispered something in her ear. She nodded.

"Can you tell me what 12 times 12 is?" 

Lance looked confused by the question for a moment. "144."

"8 times 7?"

He breathed in a few more times. "...56."

"11 times-"

"Why am I doing times tables?"

"Shiro says it can helps to focus on something."

Lance looked down. He was now sitting against a wall, hugging his knees.

Allura's tone turned more hesitant. "Lance, when I lost Altea, there was a part of me that wanted to give up, that thought all hope was lost. I had lost my family, my friends, almost everyone I ever knew. But I didn't give up, and now I've found some new friends, a new purpose. And-"

Lance gave a defeated sigh. "I'm not you, Allura." He picked at his pants. "You're this amazing space princess, and I'm just-" He choked back another sob. "I'm nothing now! You could come back because you're- you! Everyone loves you, you're talented and smart and important and you can do all these cool things-- of course you're meant to get back up! What am I? I'm a failure, I was never even meant to get to fighter class-" He started gasping for breath in the middle of his sentences again. "-I've been holding you back from the start, I'm no good at fighting, I'm lazy and stupid and- annoying, all I ever do is annoy you guys, and I couldn't even see when Shiro asked me for help!"

Allura gently placed her hands on either side of Lance's face, lifting his head. "None of us saw what was happening to Shiro, that is not your fault. None of the things you said about yourself are true. You're part of the team, and we all care about you."

Lance scoffed. "Yeah, sure. That's why you all avoid me at all costs. That's why you all hate it whenever I open my mouth. That's why none of you even mentioned _anything_ when I died. Because you just care so much."

"Lance, I didn't know-" Allura started.

"You shouldn't have bothered bringing me back." He mumbled, looking at the ground again.

Allura stepped back as if smacked. "Lance, that is something I would _never_ regret. We need-"

"You died?" Hunk was unable to help himself. When Lance looked up, it looked as if the others had been holding themselves back from asking the same thing.

He laughed. "Why should I be surprised? No one even noticed, I didn't even get a mention." He laughed again, getting increasingly worried looks from the others. "See, this is the kind of thing where I usually say "Yeah, maybe you don't matter so much to these guys, but at least you have your family back home!" His laughs became a cracking voice and sobs. "And I'd be able to handle it, but I don't- I can't-"

Allura looked to the others for help. Shiro tried crouching in front of Lance. "Listen to me, you're going to get past this."

"I don't _want_ to get past this."

"But you will. And we're going to help you, because we're a team. We're all paladins."

"I'm a placeholder."

"What?"

"Blue only took me in to get you guys out there to your real lions, and Red took me because Allura was better for Blue and we needed a full team. Now that everyone's back, it's- Allura is best for Blue, Keith is best for Red. I don't really belong with any of the lions." He sighed. "I was going to leave when we got here, but now I don't even have a place to go."

Shiro looked like he was about to say something, but was cut off by Keith punching the wall of a nearby house as hard as he could. He was breathing heavy, and he was crying by this point too. He directed a short "Sorry" to Lance before turning to Pidge and Hunk. "What the _Hell_ happened when I was gone? How did you let Lance get like this _without even noticing_?"

"I didn't think-" Pidge stammered, looking actually afraid.

"Oh, so you just didn't think about your friend? Because that sounds-" He took a menacing step forward before he was interrupted.

"Stop!" Lance yelled. Keith immediately listened.

"It's not their fault, they had to do so much engineering and tech work, and they just didn't have a lot of time to hang out and I couldn't keep up with them when they were doing work. And then I guess I felt bad about that and jealous that they were getting so close and I started to pull away from them during free time and then it just got worse, it's ny fault, alright? It wasn't them being assholes or because they don't like me or-" Lance's eyes flickered as he realized what he said. "Oh."

Hunk took the opportunity to speak. "Yeah, we never meant to exclude you. We didn't know you felt like that. If we had known- but even so, we shouldn't have needed you to tell us this. It's our faults, but it wasn't because we don't care."

Lance took another look at the remains of the house he grew up in as more tears came. He wished there was something, anything left of it. He shook his head.

"Pidge, I want you to hack into the Galra communication logs. You dig up everyone involved in doing this. I want to destroy them all." He stood, a dangerous look in his eye. "You guys might have some people you want to check on, I'll head back so you can get in your own lions."

"Wait, Lance-" Keith started.

"We can talk when we get back. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to remember it like this. Please."

There were no other complaints as they all piled back into the red lion, which thankfully took over most of the flying, as Lance couldn't see past his tears. He was starting to get a headache from crying so hard. He looked around for a water bottle, but his eyes locked on his bayard.

He looked away moments later, not wanting to draw suspicion in case he decided to do it. It wasn't as if he hadn't thought about it before, but now the thing that always stopped him was gone.

He glanced behind him. Too many worried glances being thrown his way. But he couldn't bare to wait another moment. Maybe if he was quick enough-

Without glancing at it again his hand shot out and grabbed his bayard. He had it positioned below his neck before it had even fully formed into a gun. He saw the others lunge to stop him, heard their gasps of panic, even felt his lion swerve to jostle him, but he had pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened. His bayard was pulled from his hands by Keith, whose face was completely closed off. He closed his eyes for a few moments.

His voice shook. "Never do that again."

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this, maybe even make it happy! Which seems kind of unlikely right now, but I might turn it around.


End file.
